Sindh Board of Revenue taking a lead in computerizing revenue record has covered all 29 districts of province and have entered over 15 million pages in its data

Karachi, April 05, 2016 (PPI-OT):Sindh Board of Revenue (BoR) taking a lead in computerizing revenue record in the country has covered all the 29 districts of the province and have entered over 15 million pages in its data. This was stated by Senior Member BOR Rizwan Memon while giving presentation to the chief minister on computerisation of Revenue Record here at the CM House today.

The presentation was attended by Chief Secretary Siddique Memon, Secretary to CM Iqbal Durrani, Member BoR Zulfikar Shah and others concerned revenue officers. The senior Member BoR, Rizwan Memon said that the revenue record of 29 districts comprising over 15 million pages. “Our nine data entry firms have completed 90 percent entry of revenue record by scanning documents and making their index,” he said.

Member Board of Revenue Zulfikar Shah said that the revenue record had inherent flaws which were also rectified by adopting proper procedure. Giving examples of flaws, Zulfikar Shah said that 35 percent flaws were found in the division of shares, 30 percent record had missing survey numbers, there were 3 percent errors of calculation, one percent record lacked entries of sellers and buyers and two percent entries were made without attestation.

The chief minister recalled that the record of about 850 dehs was burnt just after the assassination of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto. “What have you done to retrieve that record,” he asked the senior Member Rizwan Memon who said that a large portion of that record have been traced out from Microfilming units. “We have retrieved and computerised the record of 400 dehs and still working on the tracing the record of the remaining 450 dehs,” he said.

Member BoR Zulfikar Shah said that major forms which have been computerised are village Form-1 means registered lands; Village Form-II means register of land used/granted or assigned for non-agricultural purposes, Village Form VII- Part which is record of rights of agricultural lands; Village Form VII-Part -B means Mutation register, Property Register (it is maintained in Karachi showing details of land separately held from government and municipality and Property Card which is maintained in all city survey areas except Karachi in place of property register.

He said that with computerization of Revenue record he has collected a very interesting data that 78 percent are small farmers who own less than 4 acres. Those who own four to 16 acres of land are 16 percent. The big land owners who own from 16 to 100 acres are only 6 percent while the biggest land owners who possess above 100 acres are hardly 0.34 percent.

Replying to a question of the chief minister, member BoR said that 76 percent of land is owned by male and nine percent is owned by female and 15 percent land is owned by others means male, female and children jointly. He said that for the first time in Pakistan mobile application `Sindh Zameen’ has been launched through which land records can be accessed. More than 80,000 people have utilised this facility.

Mr Shah said that they have established 27 service centres, of them 25 have been functionalised in the district headquarters and the remaining four would be made operation by the end of this month (April 2016). Talking about the facilities available at the services centre, Mr Zulfikar Shah said that the copy of land record can be obtained from any service centre through modern central database. “A specialized security based paper with multiple security features and QR code has been used to prevent forgery.

Talking about a data centre at Karachi, he said that it has been established storing largest Sindhi language database in the world with seven Tera Bytes (TB) data comprising more than 15 million pages of land record. “We have 108 qualified IT staff for all 27 service centres,” he said. He also said that conversion of microfilmed data of 75 million pages into digital data underway which would be available online by the end of 2016.

Senior Member BoR Rizwan Memon said that digital maps of 93 dehs of Karachi division and maps of remaining districts of the province have been linked with the land record database. The chief minister directed the Board of Revenue to make their caller centre functional to address errors, if any. “You must have a feedback system to rectify the errors and mistakes, if any,” he said.

The chief secretary invited the chief minister Syed Qaim Ali to inaugurate the computerisation system of Revenue record so that it could be made functional all over Sindh. The chief minister agreed to open it in Hyderabad next week and urged them to publicize their facility because the people are fade up with the patwari system. “First you make it a successful system I would give you mutation work also,” he said.